Vivian Gaddy was a healthy middle-aged woman with a part-time clerical job when a mysterious infection in her neck spread and attacked her heart, leaving her comatose in a hospital bed for 57 days.

Gaddy, 57, of Asheville, North Carolina had health insurance, but more than a year later she has depleted her savings to pay medical bills and still owes $7,500 (£4,500).

About three years ago Gaddy purchased an insurance plan with a low monthly premium but a high deductible (excess), because she could only find part-time work and was in good health. But in May 2008, she felt a pain in her neck after a day of gardening.

"The infection tried to eat my kidneys and liver and it did get my perfectly well heart valve," she said. "I laid in a hospital room with critical care nurses around me for 24 hours a day, in the most intense intensive care room that anyone could have."

Gaddy returned home from the hospital to a stack of medical bills. She now pays about $300 per month to as many as 15 different physicians, x-ray and MRI technicians and testing labs.

"It has been one year and I'm still going through bills," she said.

Still too ill to work, and having run through $3,000 she had saved before the illness, Gaddy relies on her family to support her. Despite all her financial woes, "my spirits are fine", she says, "because I lived".